Deranged [1974]

An 'MGM Presents Midnite Movies' Double Feature disc, this cannily pairs two backwoods, bib-overall psycho movies in which the bodies of the recently dead are used by hayseeds for psychological comfort or cannibal profit. Both films have more than enough moments of interest to make up for their rough-hewn drawbacks - these are deliberate variations on the themes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre rather than fully original works, though each brings more than enough of new material to the table and has proved influential on subsequent down-home killing sprees.

The A-Side feature is Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby's Deranged, a lightly-fictionalised version of the crimes of Ed Gein which takes the odd approach of having a bushy-haired journalist [Les Carlson - Berry Convex from Videodrome] striding around town and popping up Rod Serling-like in the house of horrors to deliver background material and editorial comment [rather like Woody Allen's use of sportscaster Howard Cosell to host an assassination in Bananas]. It may be that the filmmakers were driven to this by the need to sort a messy series of disjointed anecdotes into something like a plot [which the later, similar Ed Gein signally failed to do], but the device also serves to set off Roberts Blossom's extremely intense, surprisingly subtle portrayal of grave-robber, necro-sadist and murderer Ezra Cobb. Towards the climax, as a dead naked girl is hung upside-down and blood flows over her breasts as Ez skins her, Blossom gets into the grinning fiend mode favoured by 1999 out of every 2,000 H.G. Lewis maniacs, but for the most part he is slyer, paradoxically open about his misdeeds [his neighbours just don't take him seriously] and an intriguing mixture of fey innocence, brutal cunning and bizarre ambition to social advancement.

The death of Ez's bedridden mother, a mad religious shrew ['The wages of sin is gonorhhea, syphilis and death!'], is a striking moment: she begins to haemorrhage and the middle-aged mama's boy can only think to keep spooning her green soup, even ladling up the blood and trying to force it back into her mouth. Sketch-like sequences present three murders of disparate women - a lusty widow who tries to seduce Ez with a mock-seance ['there you are,' she coos, thinking she feels his erection when he really does have a gun in his pocket], a blowsy barmaid lured back to the isolated farmhouse as company for the mummified mother and her body-snatched 'friends' and an innocent shopgirl hunted like a deer to the extent of being caught in a snare and ‘dressed'. As effective are scenes that rely on everyday dialogue which takes a new meaning when heard through Ez's ears ['How'd you like to tear off a piece of that, eh?' burps a drunken lech in a bar, indicating the barmaid] or unsettling little conversations like Ez's quiet amazement that newspaper obituaries give details of who is liable to be freshly buried [Blossom plays this scene like a man learning that the world tolerates and is even looks benignly on what he thought was his secret vice]. It has a clumsy streak and a few too many Canadian accents, but it's a rare psycho movie that does more than try to make its killer sympathetic. We come to understand Ez but also to see how much his little boy personality is an act and pass through pity to recognise how dangerous and even evil he is.

Side Two's Motel Hell is more cartoon-like, but equally demented. Farmer Vincent [Rory Calhoun] and his sister Ida [Nancy Parsons, Miss Balbricker from Porky's] run the Motel Hello [the neon o doesn't quite work] and have a sideline in famous natural-smoked meats which turn out to be harvested from passing customers who have their vocal cords cut and are planted in a secret garden to be fattened. It's another anecdotal piece, owing something to Eating Raoul as various caricatures [a rock band called Ivan and the Terribles, a pair of ridiculous 'swingers', some hookers, a food inspector] show up at the motel, make trouble or fools of themselves and wind up as nodding, hypntoised heads poking out of the ground. The plot motor is Vincent's yen for a father-fixated motorcycle crash survivor [Nina Axelrod], which gives his Sheriff brother [Paul Linke] and partner-in-crime sister different reasons to become jealous and brings down ultimate disaster. Unlike the 82-minute Deranged, Motel Hell straggles on a little too long for its own good, with horror sketches that become repetitive even though British director Kevin Connor spices them with solid jump-out-and-go-boo scares. The finale is unforgettable as Vincent, wearing a pig's head, engages in a chainsaw duel with his own brother and ‘fessing up to the crime he is most ashamed of ['I'm the biggest hypocrite of them all... I used preservatives'].

The disc is regrettably light on extras, which are limited to a pair of exploitation trailers, though both have optional English, Spanish and French subtitles and Motel Hell offers Spanish Stereo and a French Mono track in addition to the English Stereo. Considering the low-budegt look of the productions, the transfers are fine, serving the chilly woodland and decayed interiors of Deranged as well as the neon-fringed nightscapes and bloody workshop of Motel Hell. The Midnite Movies releases have a reputation for unannounced restorations, but though Deranged contains much of the violence often snipped it is missing a minute or so of eyeball-scooping present in an earlier video release. Despite this unfortunate omission - a distributor cut, since dialogue has been shifted around to smooth it over - the print is in much better shape than that used for the video and the anamorphic widescreen image affords a much clearer look at the intricate and detailed art direction [note the skull fruitbasket and the stray arm tacked to the wall].
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here. Commissioned for DVD Delirium Vol 2.

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